Trump Inspects Prototypes for Proposed Border Wall

President Donald Trump traveled yesterday to San Diego, where he was given a tour of multiple prototype versions of what he hopes will ultimately be a physical wall stretching along hundreds of miles of the United States’ southern border with Mexico.

Tweeting a video of his arrival, the president said, “If we don’t have a wall system, we’re not going to have a country.”

The eight prototypes – four built primarily out of concrete and four based on other materials – cost between $300,000 and $500,000 each and were constructed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in October, reportedly undergoing testing in “real-world border environments” in the interim.

The president has insisted that initial funding for a border wall be a component of any final immigration deal coming from Congress. According to Reuters, “The White House has told Republican congressional leaders the president would consider an agreement to shield young immigrants in exchange for money for his proposed wall on the U.S. border with Mexico,” with the possibility that an agreement could “come as part of a spending bill Congress needs to pass before midnight March 23.”

Even if successful, however, the proposed funds would only impact “74 miles of barriers in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley and San Diego,” according to the Los Angeles Times, while a full-scale wall proposal like the one presented by CBP would require the construction along 970 miles of varying terrain, making the ultimate completion of such a project a still-tenuous prospect.

With funding and political support still in question, the final wall design also remains up-in-the-air following the president’s inspection of the prototypes. One official said the strengths and weaknesses of multiple designs would likely need to be combined in a Lego-like approach and that the agency remains in “the testing phase.”